They opened their Moro restaurant in the area in 1997, then in 2004, launched the 59-room Zetter, one of the most talked-about hotels at the time, despite the pair having no hotel experience.
“Most of my inspiration is from America,” Benyan says. “I looked at the original Ace in Seattle [which opened in 1999], and showed it to Mark and said ‘check this out; it’s an old warehouse; where there’s brick they’ve just painted it and they’ve got a funky ground-floor thing going on and it’s just $100 a night’. I said if we could do that – find an old warehouse space, do it up and sell it for £100 a night – we’d do OK. It took us two years to find the building, but we did it.”
They followed on from this conversion of a five-storey warehouse, with a 13-bedroom quirky townhouse hotel across the cobbles of St John’s Square behind the Zetter and championed the king of cocktails - Tony Conigliaro, who became drinks consultant for them just as he was igniting the capital’s booming cocktail scene.
The Zetter Group was starting to take shape. Then they went back to their restaurant roots by extending their partnership with chef Bruno Loubet to open Grain Store, which has become one of London’s most feted restaurants, set in the booming new hub of Kings Cross and a place that focused on making vegetables the star of the show at the height of London’s healthy eating boom.
And now, there is an eccentric cousin, with the arrival of the 24-room Zetter Townhouse Marylebone, over in Portman Village, another interesting quarter of London.
A real go-zetter - the little hotel group making a big impact
Register for free to continue reading
Get unlimited access to the latest travel industry news and analysis, comment on articles and sign up to newsletters.
Register for free
Already registered? Login here or below.
Having difficulty logging in? Try these tips, or contact support@ttgmedia.com



